Konami Earnings Up On Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker Success

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Company doubles earnings over last year.

By Anoop Gantayat

Konami's sales and earnings are up, and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker had a lot to do with it.

Over the first six months of the fiscal year (April through September), Konami posted revenues of 115.8 billion yen and operating income of 8.1 billion yen. These are up over last year's 113.9 billion yen and 4.6 billion yen.

The company cited PSP's Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker as a "solid performer" over the period. Winning Eleven/Pro Evolution and Japan-only titles like Love Plus and Powerful Pro Baseball, the latter seeing PS3 release for the first time, also sold well.

While Konami did not provide exact sales figures, it did share numbers for broad categories. Soccer games sold 3.42 million units. Metal Gear games sold 1.47 million units. Unless there's another Metal Gear game we're missing, Peace Walker likely accounted for most of those Metal Gear sales.

Peace Walker saw its best performance in Japan, where PSP is among the top selling platforms. Not surprisingly, Japan was Konami's top territory, accounting for 4.34 million units of software. Europe sold 3.42 million units, and North America 2.18 million. Total software sales reached 10.05 million units, up greatly from last year's 5.89 million.

With the focus on Winning Eleven and Metal Gear, it shouldn't be surprising to learn that PSP and PS3 were Konami's biggest platforms for the year, respectively accounting for 28% and 29% of unit sales. Wii accounted for 12%, down from the 23% of last year, when it was Konami's biggest platform.